What's the deal? An exploration of career management behaviour in Iceland

This article reports the findings of a longitudinal study that investigated the nature of the career deal in Iceland, chosen as a research setting because it potentially offers a very different career environment to that which exists in the UK and US, where most previous research examining contemporary careers has been conducted. The findings show that certain dimensions of the contemporary career deal shown to exist in the UK are less apparent in the Icelandic context. While a close reciprocal relationship between career self-management behaviour and organizational career management help does exist, other potential aspects of the deal are absent. In Iceland, individuals who get more help with managing their careers are more committed to their employer but this commitment does not imply that they will do more to manage their own careers with their current employer as result. In addition, no links were found between career management activities and job performance. In Iceland individuals do not engage in career self-management behaviour to any great extent and when they do, their behaviour does not seem to have the same kind of focus or meaning that it has been shown to have in the context of the contemporary career deal that exists in the UK.     

The New Keynesian Phillips curve with myopic agents

Empirical estimations of the New Keynesian Phillips curve support hybrid versions with a positive weight on lagged inflation and a weight less than one on expected inflation. We argue that myopic price setting of some agents explains the low weight on expected inflation. The lagged term can be explained by trend extrapolation if information about the future is costly. In a laboratory experiment we implement the Calvo (1983) microfoundations of the Phillips curve. Our hypotheses are supported by the experimental data. About half of the subjects set optimal Calvo prices while about a third is myopic.     

Ties that blind? How strong ties affect small business owner-managers’ perceived trustworthiness of their advisors

This research investigates how a strong personal relationship (strong tie) between a small business owner-manager and his professional or informal advisor affects the relationship between the advisor's recent performance and the owner-manager's perceptions of the advisor's trustworthiness in terms of ability, benevolence and integrity. A negative moderating effect could point to a ‘tie that blinds’: the owner-manager may be less critical in evaluating the advisor's perceived trustworthiness in light of their recent performance, because of the existing personal relationship. A conceptual model is constructed and examined with survey data comprising 153 young Finnish businesses. The results show that strong ties increase the owner-manager's perception of the advisor's integrity, disregarding their recent performance. For professional advisors, strong ties reduce the impact of recent performance in the owner-manager's evaluation of their ability. For informal advisors, a strong tie makes it more likely that their benevolence will be evaluated highly in light of their recent performance. While the results show that ‘ties can blind’ under certain circumstances, the limitations of the study raise the need for further research to specify these contextual factors and examine the causal link between the choice of advisor and business performance.     

Analyst Recommendations and Regulation: Scopes for European Policy Makers to Enhance Investor Protection

Investors rely on analyst recommendations when making investment decisions. Over the last few years, however, sell-side analysts have caught the attention of the supervisory authorities given their vulnerability to numerous conflicts of interest. In this paper, we empirically examine relevant regulatory measures that have an impact upon analysts’ activities, namely the market abuse directive and markets in financial instruments directive. We find that European regulators have primarily focused on mitigating conflicts of interest. However, to establish an environment of more sophisticated investor protection additional regulatory effort is required. Therefore, in this paper, we provide related empirical evidence and discuss proposals to correct regulatory shortcomings in order to strengthen investor protection in the European Union.     

Is innovation in pricing your next source of competitive advantage?

Few companies treat innovation in pricing as seriously as product innovation or business model innovation. However, after interviews with 50 executives and the analysis of pricing practices of 70 companies worldwide, our research suggests that innovation in pricing may be a company's most powerful—and, in many cases, least explored—source of competitive advantage. Innovation in pricing brings new-to-the-industry approaches to pricing strategies, to pricing tactics, and to the organization of pricing with the objective of increasing customer satisfaction and company profits; too many companies today see pricing as a win/lose proposition between themselves and their customers. Innovation in pricing breaks this deadlock and shows how to increase profits and customer satisfaction conjointly. As a result of our research, we present a canvas laying out more than 20 possible avenues for innovation in pricing, offering to any organization—regardless of size, industry, or nationality—a few key ideas on how to increase both profits and customer satisfaction.     

Collaborative projects (social media application): About Wikipedia,the free encyclopedia

Collaborative projects—defined herein as social media applications that enable the joint and simultaneous creation of knowledge-related content by many end-users—have only recently received interest among a larger group of academics. This is surprising since applications such as wikis, social bookmarking sites, online forums, and review sites are probably the most democratic form of social media and reflect well the idea of user-generated content. The purpose of this article is to provide insight regarding collaborative projects; the concept of wisdom of crowds, an essential condition for their functioning; and the motivation of readers and contributors. Specifically, we provide advice on how firms can leverage collaborative projects as an essential element of their online presence to communicate both externally with stakeholders and internally among employees. We also discuss how to address situations in which negative information posted on collaborative projects can become a threat and PR crisis for firms.     

Energy policy: European,national, regional?

When it comes to energy policy, EU countries go their own way with little regard for other member states. What strategies exist in the EU Commission to coordinate and integrate energy markets? Are these strategies consistent with national plans currently in action? Is it too late to establish a unifi ed energy policy? What can be achieved in a unifi ed energy policy given the considerable differences in resource endowment and political preferences in energy strategies? Can the effectiveness of EU energy policy objectives be enhanced through policy coordination at the regional scale? This Forum seeks to provide answers to these questions.     

Headquarters to subsidiary transfer effects on marketing strategy exploitation

The transfer of locally created marketing strategies worldwide represents a key competitive advantage for multinational corporations (MNCs). Although a research topic of much interest, empirical content of past studies is scarce. Absorptive capacity studies typically test direct effects of either the transfer capacity of the strategy's initiator or the recipient's ability to process and exploit the strategy on related learning outcomes. Mixed findings allow the possibility of more complex relationships. This study examines the relationships between MNC headquarters and marketing units located in subsidiary firms using a sample of 213 marketing managers. The study systematically explores linear, interaction, and quadratic effects within a structural equation modeling paradigm. The findings indicate that the relationship between a MNC headquarters' transfer capacity and a subsidiary marketing unit's processing capacity on the strategy's exploitation is one of mediation and moderation. The subsidiary marketing unit's processing capacity is a key mediating variable and headquarters' transfer capacity moderates the effects of this variable on the exploitation of the marketing strategy by the subsidiary's unit.     

Making customer relationship decisions: Analytics v rules of thumb

This article explores how customer management decisions are made in the leading Nordic retail banks and whether these decisions are driven by mainstream analytical approaches to customer lifetime value available through the banks' CRM systems, or by rule of thumb heuristics. The results indicate that the use of managerial heuristics is surprisingly widespread and, counter-intuitively, that rule of thumb heuristic-based decision making frequently outweighs measures such as customer lifetime value with regard to customer management decisions. The implications are considerable because if successful banks are making widespread use of heuristics, managers and academics would benefit from understanding the conditions under which heuristic decision making can be more successful than an analytic approach. This understanding, in turn, may highlight a limitation of CRM systems and point to a more flexible approach to customer management decisions in which experience-based managerial heuristics modify data from formal CRM systems.     

Global Sustainability Governance and the UN Global Compact: A Rejoinder to Critics

This article takes the critique by Sethi and Schepers (J Bus Ethics, 2013, in this thematic symposium) as a starting point for discussing the United Nations (UNs) Global Compact. While acknowledging the relevance of some of their arguments, we emphasize that a number of their claims remain arguable and are partly misleading. We start by discussing the limits of their proposed framework to classify voluntary initiatives for corporate sustainability and responsibility. Next, we show how a greater appreciation of the historical and political context of the UN Global Compact puts several of their claims into perspective. Finally, we demonstrate that the alleged promise–performance gap rests on a selected and one-sided reading of the initiative. We close by pointing to some challenges that the initiative needs to address in the future.